Nightwork
A Dave Brandstetter Mystery
Joseph Hansen
For Bobker Ben Ali
Contents
1
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3
4
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Preview: The Little Dog Laughed
1
THE CREEKBED WAS PAVED with sloping slabs of concrete and walled by standing slabs of concrete to a height of ten feet. Weeds sprouted from the cracks between the slabs, showing that water seeped underneath, but the slabs were bone dry, bone white, and glared in the morning sun. Seeing them, no one not native here would credit that when the rains came, water would rush muddy, deep, and dangerous under this concrete-slab bridge.
Before the construction of these acres of shacky stucco houses in 1946, the creekbed was shallow, cluttered with boulders from the far-off mountains, shaded by live oaks, and clumpy with brush. He remembered it that way from the 1930s. Then, the only house out here was on a rise. He looked for it out the window of the Jaguar now. There it stood among trees, a white Victorian hulk with cupolas, scalloped shingles, long porches bristly with jigsaw work. The Gifford place. Back then, this flat land by the creek was all that remained of the once vast Gifford Ranch.
Los Angeles had expanded even before World War II. One by one, the upland sections of the ranch were sold off and turned into pleasant suburbs. During the Depression, only the well-off could buy land and build on it. But then the aircraft factories and shipyards put everyone to work. Goods became scarce. People saved. Housing couldn’t be built during the war. Afterward, contractors couldn’t put up houses fast enough. Buyers were waiting. Dave smiled wryly to himself. These places must have gone up in summer, while the creekbed was dry, and been sold in the dry autumn.
With winter came the rains. And the creek flooded, as it always had. And the bright new little houses were up to their windowsills in swirling water. Overnight, mattresses, sofas, armchairs that still smelled fresh from Sears and Montgomery Ward became bloated sponges. The new Philco radios crackled and expired. The new Fords, Chevies, Plymouths everyone had waited years to buy drowned behind the warped doors of garages in the dark. It was a headline scandal. It became a headline scandal winter after winter—until the County at last gouged out the creekbed and lined it with concrete slabs. Much too late.
He swung the Jaguar off the bridge and onto a street that paralleled the creek. The paving was patched and potholed. Cans, bottles, wrappers clogged the dusty gutters. Squat stucco shops lined the street. Many of the signs were old, sun-faded, crackled. A few were new—shallow tin boxes of fluorescent tubes, fronted by crisply lettered white plastic sheets. Stones or bottles had been thrown through some of these—LAUNDROMAT, DISCOUNT APPLIANCES, FRIENDLY LEO’S. Dave couldn’t make out what Friendly Leo sold. The unwashed windows were empty.
The high white sign that said LIQUOR was intact. Under it, brown men in ragged clothes sat on the littered sidewalk with their backs against a storefront in whose windows pyramids of soft-drink cans, beer cans, wine bottles sparkled in the sun. The brims of straw hats were pulled low on the foreheads of the brown men to shield their eyes from the sun. They clutched rumpled brown sacks that appeared to hold beer cans or wine bottles. Some of them smoked. Now and then they spoke, but none of them smiled. They looked sad, aimless, and without strength.
Around a corner of the building, on a bumpy dirt parking lot where no cars waited—it was not yet eight in the morning—teenage boys tilted back their heads and poured soft drinks down their throats from bright cans, or jokily pushed each other, or halfheartedly wrestled, or leaned watching beside bicycles against the liquor store wall, which was spray-painted with graffiti. They were Chicanos. Some wore green jackets stenciled GIFFORD GARDENS on the back. Dave halted the Jaguar at a battered stop sign. The boys turned, nudged each other, stared at the car.
Dave drove on, disgusted with himself for bringing the car here. He glumly eyed the Blaupunkt radio in the burled wood of the dashboard. They might not strip a Jaguar here. Where would they fence the parts? But they would almost certainly steal a Blaupunkt. He could afford to replace it—that wasn’t the point. He hated the notion of the car being broken into, violated. It would be like splintering an Amati. At another corner with a stop sign, he glanced into the side mirror. Boys in green jackets were following him on bicycles. He waited for a dirty white van marked in red with a plumber’s name to turn out of the side street, then drove on. He pressed the accelerator pedal. The speedometer needle climbed. There was no engine roar—just quiet, powerful obedience.
But they continued to follow, patient as a pack of wolves. For maybe ten blocks. Then, suddenly, when he glanced at the mirror, they had vanished. On a corner lot fenced in sagging chainlink, a corrugated iron garage yawned blackly. Old Mustang automobiles clustered in front of it, waiting to be made new. And beside an old-fashioned red ice chest labeled Coca-Cola in scuffed white script, eight or ten black youths, some teenaged, some a little older, lounged, laughing with very white teeth. They sobered when they saw the Jaguar. They looked thoughtful, tilting their heads. They wore black jackets stenciled THE EDGE.
Dave drove on, frowning. Ought he to. have brought Cecil Harris? Cecil was a young black who lived with Dave and shared his bed. And his dangers. Cecil was just out of the hospital where, for long, slow months, he had mended from bullet wounds. He was still weak and thin. He tired quickly. This day would be a scorcher. It would wring the boy out. He had begged to come along, but Dave had made him stay behind in the comparative cool of the rambling house in the tree-grown canyon. Dave doubted that Cecil’s presence with him in the Jaguar would change attitudes in Gifford Gardens. He drove on, watching the mirrors for signs of The Edge.
He saw none until he reached Lemon Street. On this corner, flat-roofed, concrete-block buildings bracketed a courtyard with a big rubber tree. A sign read THE KILGORE SCHOOL. The school was fenced in brick, topped by neat, square-cornered iron bars. Small kids in tanktops and shorts, yellow, green, magenta, clutched books and lunches outside the gate. Anglos. Two or three orientals. No blacks, no browns. Through a glass door at the end of the courtyard, two striped gray cats looked out expectantly. He swung the Jaguar off the creekside street, and here were cramped, lookalike tract houses on narrow lots. Around the corner after him turned a 1973 Mustang that had been sanded down to its body steel and had black holes where its headlights used to be.
It parked across from the school, and he forgot about it until, five or six blocks onward, when he stopped at the curb in front of the Myers house, he glimpsed it in the door mirror as he left the Jaguar. The Mustang rolled to a halt a few doors back. He gave it only a glance, reached into the rear seat of the Jaguar for his jacket, put this on. No one got out of the Mustang. The windshield was dirty, but he thought two people were inside. He locked the Jaguar and went up a cracked sidewalk between patches of summer-seared grass where an old heavy wooden skateboard lay like a dead beetle on its back, one set of wheels missing. He climbed two short steps, pressed a door buzzer, and turned to look again at the Mustang. It sat there like a steel coffin.
The house door opened. A young man stood inside, naked except for briefs, hair uncombed, a stubble of dark beard. He winced at the brightness of the morning. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot. He licked cracked, dry lips, and croaked, “Who the hell are you, now?”
“Brandstetter.” Dave had a card ready, and poked it at the closed aluminum screen door. “I’m from Pinnacle Insurance. Death-cla
ims division. It’s about Paul Myers. I need to see Angela Myers, please.”
The young man grunted, snapped a catch on the screen door, pushed it open six inches, took the card and squinted at it. “Something wrong with the insurance?”
“Something wrong with how he died,” Dave said. “Is Angela Myers here? Who are you?”
“Gene Molloy. I’m her brother.” He turned and shouted into the house, “Angie? Some guy for you from the insurance company.” He frowned at Dave through the silvery mesh. “It was an accident. He lost control of his rig. It went off a curve in Torcido Canyon and exploded and burned.” He stepped back and shouted, “Angie!” This time, a female voice, high-pitched and short-tempered, shouted back. Dave couldn’t make out the words. Car doors slammed. Two black youths had gotten out of the Mustang, one muscular, the other fat, both in jackets marked THE EDGE. They came ambling up the sidewalk, looking at everything but the Jaguar. Molloy saw them. “What the fuck,” he said.
“They followed me,” Dave said. “They admire my car.”
“Oh, shit.” Molloy pushed the screen. “Get in here.” He grabbed Dave’s arm.
Dave held back. “I don’t want them to dismantle it.”
“Better it than you,” Molloy said. “Get in here.” Dave got in. The room was dim, the air close, smelling of sweaty sleep and stale cigarette smoke. The sofa had been used as a bed. The rumpled sheet looked as if it covered a dead body. Empty beer cans stood on a cheap coffee table by the sofa. So did a fluted pink china ashtray full of butts. On a stack of magazines. Scientific American? At the foot of the sofa, on a wheeled tubular cart, a small television set showed blurred images without sound. Dave said, “Where’s the telephone?”
“You don’t need a telephone, you need a gun.” Molloy snicked the lock on the screen door, shut the wooden door, locked it, fastened a chain that looked flimsy. “The cops will take all day getting here. They don’t like messing with the gangs. You can get shot that way, knifed—you can get dead. Two of them died already this year.”
“It seems a good neighborhood to leave.” Dave pried open two of the thin slats on a blind and looked out. The Edge youths were walking slowly around the Jaguar, wagging their heads in admiration. But their hands were still in their pockets. “Why don’t you move?”
“Paul and I bought this house.” It was that angry female voice again. Dave let the blind go. It rattled loosely. “If we only rented, that would be different. But everybody knows what Gifford Gardens is. Who’d buy? Who’d be stupid enough to move here? We’re stuck. I mean—I’m stuck.” She turned in the door, calling into the back of the house. “If you two don’t get a move on, you’ll be late.”
Children’s voices called, each canceling out the message of the other. Didn’t raising your young here amount to criminal child endangerment? They appeared. They looked all right, bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, carrying books and lunch sacks.
Molloy told them, “Go out the back way. Cut across the vacant lot. Go down Lime Street.”
“What’s wrong?” Angela Myers stared.
“The Edge is out front,” Molloy said. “Two of them. They followed Mister”—Dave’s card was crumpled in his fist; he smoothed it and peered at it—“Mister Brandstetter here. He’s got a big, fancy foreign car.”
“Brian. Ruth Ann.” Angela Myers gave her head a sharp tilt. The boy, fair hair in his eyes like a sheepdog’s, Dave guessed to be about nine, the dark-haired girl perhaps eleven. They turned and disappeared. A door banged. Small shoes ran away quickly in the morning stillness. The Myers woman said to Molloy, “At least it’s not the G-G’s.”
Dave studied her. She wore a starchy sand-colored outfit with white trim. A starchy little cap was on her head. Her shoes were stubby, with thick crepe soles. Something was wrong with her face—with the shape of it. The light was bad. He tugged a frayed cord on the blinds, and slatted sunshine came in. Her face was swollen as if from a beating. She’d applied thick pancake makeup, so the colors of the bruises didn’t show, but he thought they were under there. One eye was still partly closed.
“What happened to you?” he said.
“My husband was killed,” she said. “He was just a young man. He was doing nightwork, trying to earn extra money to help out my parents, and it killed him. A man can’t drive all day and all night too. You have to have sleep. I kept telling him. So what happened? He fell asleep at the wheel and drove off the road, and now he’s dead. And how is that going to help anybody?”
“Did you bring the check?” Molloy asked Dave.
Glass shattered outside. Dave turned to the window. Through the slats, he saw the fat boy with the skateboard in his hand. He stepped back and watched while the muscular boy reached in through the broken window and opened the door of the Jaguar. “Damn!” Dave said, and lunged for the house door. He twisted the bolt and yanked. The door stopped with a jerk on the end of its short chain.
“Don’t go out there.” Molloy grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms.
“Listen!” Angela Myers ran to the window.
A siren wailed. Not far off. Dave shook free of Molloy. He pushed the door to, twitched the chain out of its slot, pulled the door wide, was stopped by the screen, scrabbled at its little lock. The Edge youths ran back to the Mustang. The fat one still had the skateboard in his hand. Did the muscular one have the radio? He couldn’t. There hadn’t been time. They fell inside the Mustang and slammed the doors. Dave stepped outside. The Mustang’s engine thrashed to life, its tires screamed. Behind its blind eye sockets, it sped off up the street, swerving wildly. Dave ran down the walk. A Sheriff’s car came up the street, gold and white, an amber light flashing on its roof. It rocked to a halt beside the Jaguar.
“They went that way,” Dave said.
2
THE SHERIFF’S CAR DID not go that way. A brown man and a black man in suntans and sunglasses stepped out of it. They were young. The black one looked overfed. He eyed the Jaguar and turned his opaque gaze on Dave. He shook his head and smiled sadly. “This yours?” And when Dave nodded, “Not your smartest move. Beverly Hills where this belong.” With a careful finger he touched a splinter of glass sticking up in the window frame. “They get anything?”
Dave bent and looked through the hole. The Blaupunkt was still in the dash. “I don’t think so. I think they wanted the radio.”
The Latino deputy scratched his chest and looked off up the bleak street where now nothing moved. “You take what you can get. You know what the unemployment figures are for teenage blacks around here? Sixty percent. Did you get a look at them? If we catch them, would you be willing to testify in court?”
From her front door, Angela Myers said, “No, he wouldn’t. You know how they make life hell for you.” She came at a soft-soled run down the walk. “They telephoned all night. They broke our windows, killed our dog, scared the kids so they couldn’t go out and play.”
The black deputy said, “He don’t live around here.”
“They’ll find him,” Angela Myers said. “You know that.” She looked at Dave. “Paul, my husband—he testified against Silencio Ruiz. For a supermarket holdup. Other people saw it, but Paul was the only one brave enough to testify.”
“Dumb enough.” This was Molloy. He had put on faded blue jeans. A cigarette burned at the corner of his mouth and jumped when he spoke. “What did he think was going to happen? The Gifford Gardens gang would give him a medal?”
“He did the right thing,” the black deputy said.
“What made you come here?” Dave said.
“Mr. Gifford called us.” The Latino pointed. The Gifford mansion shone white in the sun behind its big trees. The windows glittered in the sun. “De Witt Gifford. He lives up there.”
The black deputy chuckled. “Ain’t much gets past old De Witt. Mind everybody’s business. Like he was the King in his High Castle. Watches out that tower with binoculars. Nothing else to do.”
Dave looked at the cupola. Maybe he imagined it, but h
e thought he saw a wink of reflected sunlight sharper than that off the curved window glass. The lenses of Gifford’s Bausch & Lombs?
“Told the dispatcher some boys was after your car.”
Dave said, “I’ll have to go up and thank him.”
“You’ll have a hard time.” The Latino deputy walked around the Sheriff’s car to the driver’s side. “He’s got more chains and locks and burglar alarms than you can count. Guard dogs too. Nobody gets in there.” Across the roof of the car where the amber light still winked, he said, “Those boys will be back at the Mustang garage, probably. You want to drive with us, point them out to us?”
“Don’t do it,” Angela Myers said.
“Don’t worry,” the black deputy said. “I ain’t going in there. No way.”
“I’ll call for backup.” His partner dropped into the Sheriff’s car and reached for the dashboard microphone.
“We’ll need the marines,” the black deputy said.
“It only adds up to a broken window,” Dave said. “It’s not worth risking life and limb for. I’ll let it pass. I have work to do in this town.”
“Get yourself another car,” the black deputy said. “Look like you could buy a fleet for what this one cost.” He stroked the lustrous dark brown finish. “You want one, if they remove certain parts it don’t much matter.” He grunted when he dropped onto the seat of the Sheriff’s car. He closed the door. “I’m serious.”
“I take every man who wears a large gun seriously,” Dave said. “Thanks for coming. Thanks for your advice.”
“Mrs. Myers?” This was the Latino deputy. He bent his head and peered past his partner. “Silencio. Ruiz. He hasn’t been bothering you, has he?”
“What do you mean? He’s in San Quentin.”
“I mean your face. It looks like somebody beat you up. It wasn’t him, was it?”
“I had a fall.” She touched her swollen eye. “At the restaurant where I work.”
Nightwork Page 1
